At the core of the ongoing rise of far-right populists sits their claim to be on the side of the people and against the corrupt elites. That’s how they’ve managed to exploit the popular anger against mainstream parties across Europe — particularly in countries where the Left has failed to present itself as a credible alternative to the status quo. And they’re not only winning elections but also influencing the political mainstream along the way. But these far-right populists are by and for the ruling class just as much as the mainstream parties — only a different faction than the one currently in charge.

Mainstream commentators and academics are keen to emphasize these parties’ “illiberal” discourse and policies. We know much less, however, about the class forces and interests they represent. Sure, it’s self-obvious that businessmen like Donald Trump or Richard Tice are nothing but elite. But right-wing populism is not merely about a bunch of rich mavericks with hyperinflated egos. Understanding their political movements means moving beyond the moralistic, personalized caricatures presented by the liberal commentariat.

Generally, political parties are vehicles for certain class forces to promote their specific interests. To establish which class forces and interests are behind the populist far right, we need to delve into the social background of the wider party elites (not just their “charismatic leaders”), who their donors and mainstream media backers are, and, most importantly, what their economic agenda actually looks like.

We have a good starting point in that respect: the right-wing populist governments in countries like Hungary or (formerly) Poland. They have tended to be vehicles for the interests of domestic capitalists squeezed by the domination of foreign capital following these countries’ accession to the European Union. Albeit in a different context, this has also been the class character of the previous (and potentially future) Trump administration in the United States or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule in Turkey.

Despite the “antiestablishment” and “men of the people” image they project, their economic policies have overwhelmingly served rich elites — just like the mainstream parties they claim to be an alternative to. The difference is which rich elites they represent: those sections of the national capitalist class that feel disadvantaged by neoliberal globalization and want the state to give them a hand.

Likely to be the next far-right populist party in government, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) makes no exception to this pattern: its MPs have consistently voted in the interests of businesses, landlords, and wealthy families. Lately, the party’s leadership has been intensely courting corporate elites, promising them that an RN government would respect deficit targets. Crucially, they have pledged to give French companies preference in procurement. Neighboring Italy has already shown the path, with Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government having cut welfare benefits last year while attempting to contain the power of foreign corporations.

In other words, it’s business as usual in relation to the popular classes: austerity, precarity, and race to the bottom. It’s only the type of businesses benefiting that are different — national rather than transnational. The symbiosis between far-right populists and domestic capitalists is so strong that sometimes they are one and the same. When the Swiss People’s Party, for example, won the federal election in 2015, more than half of its MPs were entrepreneurs and virtually none were working class. In Italy, Meloni’s minister of defense, Guido Crosetto, used to be the chief lobbyist for the domestic arms industry. The only working-class thing about these parties is the profile of some of their voters (which itself is often greatly exaggerated).